Beards, Booze and Blues: The Hitchhikers' Guide

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Scherzo Chapter 2

I didn’t get very far at all with the second chapter and I have a feeling I would probably change it so Liz visits the base as opposed to Arthur in order to give the character more to do. Thoughts and opinions always welcome. You can find the first chapter here

Scherzo
By Michael Storm

The Second Chapter

“When you’ve seen one RAF base you’ve seen them all,” remarked Arthur to himself as he pulled the car to a halt at the check point. After a few moments with the guard checking his papers and verifying them with the CO, Arthur found himself driving down past the dismal buildings that made up the living quarters. His main purpose for visit was to find out what exactly the nature of the information being leaked was and see if he could find the source of the leak, if not at least pick up the trail. He parked up outside the CO’s office and let himself in.
The Commanding Officer of RAF Stansworth was a large man in both terms of height and build, a long scar migrated across his left cheek adding to the stark image. Group Captain Wilfred de Vries had been one of the RAF promising young hopefuls when he’d joined the service fresh from college. He’d sailed through the physical, excelled in the theory and had proved to be a more then adequate pilot. His career had been sadly cut short by the unfortunate chain of events which had taken the lives of several people both military and civilian and had left a mark upon the Group Captain quite literally. There were the usual inquiries into the affair as to what went wrong and the usual media circus upon where the finger-pointing and recriminations would end up, de Vries had been expecting to become a scapegoat and be tucked away in some lowly remote posting in the back of beyond. Luckily for the Group Captain this did not up happening, while he had been confined to a post based firmly on Terra Firma, the resulting inquiry had turned in his favour indicating that the Group Captain had been the victim of a series of malfunctioning equipment and his actions had averted a far worse catastrophe. Despite this, Group Captain de Vries still felt the events were his fault alone and that they were being too generous in giving him this post after six months discharge pending the inquiry.
At the moment of Arthur’s arrival de Vries was finishing giving his 2nd in-commander, Lieutenant Stapleton, his orders for the afternoon which were merely to give some of the boys a afternoon’s training in the fields. With the briefing completed and Stapleton dismissed the Group Captain turned his attention to Arthur.
“Ah you must be Mr. Fransure from the ministry,” said de Vries.
“That is correct, I’m here to look into a potential information leakage,” replied Arthur.
“Ah yes this is a unfortunate situation to be in. I’m happy to say that I am putting as much resource as I can spare into tracing the leak,” the Group Captain proudly stated.
“That is most helpful, what information has been turned up?” asked Arthur.
“Well as far as I am aware very little. Damn slack creeping into the ranks these days,” grumbled de Vries.
“With respect sir, in my experience it is usually because the set up of the leak is very well organised. It’s not the sort of thing you’d want in plain sight.”
“Don‘t contradict me!” Boomed de Vries enraged. “If it weren’t for you snotty little pen pushers, the services would be in finer order.”
“Group Captain de Vries, I suspect that may well be true but as I am no pen pusher and I have considerable field experience,” Arthur snapped back. “Before I was recruited by the ministry, I was a police officer for fifteen years. So believe me when I know how irritating it is when the pen pushers inflict their ridicules bureaucracy.”
“Police eh?” tutted de Vries scornfully. “Do you expect me to me impressed?”
“Frankly I expect you to continue being a pompous prig, but I would hope you would at least be a little less obtuse in your rationale. If you did we can hopefully get this wrapped up quicker and we have to spend less time in each others company!” Snapped Arthur slamming his violently down on the Group Captain’s desk, a repressed spark of anger flashed through his eyes as he contemptuously looked down at de Vries. An audible silence awkwardly hung in the air as the two men maintained their stances, finally the impasse was broken when de Vries reached across the desk to the intercom and flicked the communication button down.
“Cynthia, would you send for Corporal Marlin?” Asked de Vries calmly. “Okay Mr. Fransure, I’ll give you Marlin but please don’t waste your time here. I do not wish to have my establishment disrupted much longer.”
There was a sharp knock at the door and de Vries gave permission to enter, the door opened and a young red haired